In St. John's, Newfoundland, Lucas Dawe, 20, appeared in court on April 11 to face charges of possessing stolen skeletal remains. According to court documents reported by the Chronicle Herald, Dawe is suspected of stealing a skeleton, estimated to be more than 100 years old, from the All Saints Parish cemetery. The skeleton was found along a walking trail on April 6, and police were led to Dawe after an anonymous witness reported seeing him licking the bones. He was also charged with interfering with human remains, after he was accused of boiling the bones and drinking the water.

What's in a name?

Residents of a particular neighborhood in the Denver suburb of Cherry Hills Village may not have ever known the name of their subdivision: It didn't appear on signs, but could be found in the fine print of real estate documents. Nonetheless, the Cherry Hills Village City Council voted unanimously on April 16 to change the neighborhood's name from Swastika Acres to Old Cherry Hills. Councilman Dan Sheldon explained that the name came from the Denver Land Swastika Co., which divided the land into plots in the early 20th century, before the Nazis appropriated the symbol. "There was nothing wrong with [the name] at that time," Sheldon told KDVR-TV. Only one resident opposed the name change, Sheldon said. "She thought it was important to preserve that historical value of that symbol ... even though she herself lost family members in the Holocaust."

Latest religious message

Over Easter weekend, hundreds of people visited a gum tree in a suburb of Perth, Australia, after the tree appeared to start "weeping" on Good Friday, which the faithful took to be a divine sign. For three days, the tree continued to leak water from a branch stump, provoking people to drink the "holy" water and bathe in it. "What made it exciting yesterday, a man decided to take all his clothes off and have a shower," remarked neighbor Jacqui Bacich to 9News. The excitement died down after the Water Corporation discovered the tree's roots had wrapped around a cracked iron water pipe about a foot underground, and the leaking water had slowly filled up a hollow part of the trunk.

Police report

• Some days everything goes right. So it was for the Polk County Sheriff's officers who responded to a call on March 24 from Marta Diaz in Winter Haven, Fla. Diaz's car, a tan Jeep Patriot, had been stolen earlier in the day. As the officers took Diaz's statement, that same tan Jeep pulled up in front of the house, and Ronnie Dillon Willis, 25, emerged, telling deputies he was "looking for his cellular phone, which was pinging back to the residence," reported the Miami Herald. Diaz told the officers she didn't know Willis but had seen him earlier on her street. Willis told the officers he woke up that morning at that location, inside a vehicle, but he wasn't sure if it was the Jeep or a minivan also parked there. He knocked on the door of the house, but when no one answered, he took the Jeep to look for his phone, which was missing. The deputies arrested Willis for grand theft of a motor vehicle; Willis also had a suspended license, for which he received a traffic citation.

• At a Rotterdam, N.Y., Walmart, two men pulled off a well-choreographed scam on April 13 that cost the store $2,000. The men purchased three laptops, for which they paid cash, according to the Daily Gazette. But after the cashier counted the money, one man asked for it back, saying he wanted to make sure he hadn't paid too much. The other man then started dancing around the checkout area as a distraction. The thief with the money gave some of it back to the cashier, but pocketed the rest, and the clerk did not recount the cash. Police are still looking for the suspects, who were captured on surveillance video.

News of the Weird is compiled by the editors at Andrews McMeel Syndication. Send your weird news items to WeirdNewsTips@amuniversal.com.